Biodiesel: A New Way of Turning Plants into Fuel
 

If this works on a production scale, it's very promising.

Full article here: http://www.technologyreview.com/arti...5jaffe.asp?p=1
Here's a quote from the article:
That means the waste biomass of America's vast agriculture industry -- everything from corn stover (the stems and leaves of the plant) to peanut shells and fallen leaves -- can be used. A recent U.S. Department of Agriculture study (see Notebook) estimated that more than 1.3 billion tons of such waste is produced every year. If all of it were turned into biodiesel, it would provide enough fuel to replace one-third of the petroleum consumed in the United States. Furthermore, turning currently unused farmland into grassland to be harvested for biodiesel production would easily account for the other two-thirds of petroleum needs.

The new process is great but skips the fact that most agricultural "waste" is returned to the soil and it's removal from the cycle will result in rapid soil depletion. Besides reducing soil tilth it will require a greater input of petro based fertilizers to keep yields up.
See where this is going? Nothing comes for free, there is a quite a bit of wishful thinking in the article.
Bio based fuels are great but are nowhere close to a long term solution to our energy needs, I don't see them ever contributing to more than 5%.